Homepage of Mark R Johnson

Main menu

Post navigation

Character creation

Let’s talk about character creation for a bit. Or, more specifically, character creation in roguelikes.

NetHack gives you very few initial options. The player is allowed to choose their class (Wizard, Barbarian, etc), race (Human, Dwarf, etc), gender (I’m sure you can work these out) and alignment (Lawful, Neutral, Chaotic). Your starting statistics, maximum statistics and the skills they can/can’t learn (and the extent to which each can be learnt) are determined by your choices on the above, and are fixed for the remainder of the game. If you spawn as a Wizard, you simply cannot reach the highest skill with the axe, for example. You have minimal options, and background algorithms determine your skills and, therefore, your gameplay (to a large extent) from those few initial choices.

At the other end of the spectrum, the Dwarf Fortress character creation screen in Adventure Mode gives you a wealth of options. As well as picking species, gender and hometown, you can fine-tune your stats and your skills to whatever degree you want. In Fortress Mode, you can choose what exact supplies you take with your band of adventurers. In contrast to NetHack’s sparse options, and the relative opacity of how skills function, DF lays almost everything out for you at the start and gives you a huge number of options. However, importantly, there are no ‘class’ options (at least in Adventure Mode), and you simply choose which skills you desire.
These differences got me thinking about the level of choice I want to give the player in URR. I knew i wanted to give you a large level of customization, which moved me away from any kind of ‘class’ system and towards one focused on stats and skills, without boxing in the player’s options.

Initially, you select your species, your gender and your age. Your home town is selected at random, based on those owned by your species. I considered letting you select a town, but that would reveal the map, and exploration, discovering new lands and the like are going to end up as a significant goal in the game.

Once these are selected, you will then (this is being programmed at the moment) be taken to a screen on which you are given a hundred points to allocate into different areas. These include:

– Base stats:

These are strength, endurance, dexterity, willpower, and intelligence. The more you try to raise one above your species’ starting stats on the point allocation screen, the more it costs. Which is to say, putting one point into ‘Strength’ costs 10 points; the next costs 15; the next costs 20; and so on and so forth.

– Starting skills:

These are cheaper than stats – while the Strength skill applies to weapon damage, how much you can carry, how well you can chop down trees, pull back a bow, and many other things, skills only determine a single one of these. They are therefore a lot cheaper, and a lot more numerous. For instance, bow use is determined by Strength and Dexterity (stats), and Bowstring Stability, Wind Accommodation & Bow Accuracy, while the number of shots you can fire per turn (initially 1) is ruled by Targeting Speed and Drawing Speed.

– Starting items:

You can choose to spend points loading out your character with starting items. You can get going with any piece of armor of a number of qualities (some would be too valuable to spend even your full 100 points on!) and a variety of other items too. Likewise, a number of weapons of various materials are available, but you can currently only begin with two of those. You can also spend points to start with cash.

Once you’ve used up all your points (any remaining unallocated points are converted into the currency of your species), your game begins! In the initial alpha, you will spawn out in the forest, but you’ll soon be spawning in a home village, chosen randomly. Of course, balancing the cost of the different menu options is something that’ll take time, but for now, the values I’ve tentatively assigned seem reasonably balanced. This’ll be one of the many calls for feedback in the initial alpha, too. I debated letting you choose a weak initial ally on the menu (say, an attack dog), but I felt restricting it to these three was stronger. Can anyone think of anything else you could initially select?

Lastly, I still aim to have the initial alpha out by the end of the year, but I’ve had many people say to me that they’d prefer to have a bigger alpha released when it’s ready than ‘force’ a release before next year. So, while that’s still my aim, if there are initial combat/AI features I want, I will likely focus on implementing them, rather than meeting the rather arbitrary deadline I’ve set myself.

7 thoughts on “Character creation”

Sounds promising. You might also look to Unreal World for character generation notions/scenarios, as that one is rather well done for the intent and a whole lot else that would probably be relevant to URR. http://www.jmp.fi/~smaarane/urw.html

Otherwise…hmm—-guessing age is abstracted along Youth, Adult, Elderly, and so forth versus a number? Could get kind out there with a violent 2 year old laying waste to the wastes and such…

@ Getter – very interesting. It’s been briefly put on hold as I’m making a ton of progress on the worldgen atm, but I’ll obviously be coming back to it before the first alpha. Age is abstracted in that way – in broad terms, the younger you are, the better a fighter you are, but the older, the easier it is to recruit others, trade, etc. With that said, I’m debating forcing you to start young, and you get older as the game goes on. Not sure yet.

@ Leatra – nope. It’s partly willpower, and partly intelligence, but mostly just what you actually do with people. I decided I didn’t want any kind of central diplomatic modifier – it simply comes down to your actions!

Thanks : ) – I think a skill list will be a future blog entry, but not for a little while. Still planning them all out at the moment.

A few years ago I was discussing game mechanics with a friend of mine and we discussed use-oriented skill development. That is, if you use a sword, you get better at using swords. If you administer first aid, you get better at administering first aid. Village elders or other skilled professionals that have already learned these things could also teach you, so you don’t lop and arm off the first time you pick up a sword for instance.

That’s exactly my feeling on skill advancement. Only by doing/using something will you (or monsters) get better at using it. You can choose a few early skills when you start the game, but there are *no* classes the player starts off as and determine future play. You’re broadly a blank state for whatever skills you want to employ.

Have you thought about adding positive and negative advantages like in TES: Daggerfall, It adds a nice falvour to your character and it’s very fun to role play with. Like you can be blind on one eye, minus to dexterity maybe (have you thought about adding perception, seeing tasting and that stuff) and you would get say 15 points more.

I have thought about, but I haven’t reached a decision yet on whether or not I’m going to put choices of that sort in. I think I am, but I’d need to make sure the advantages/disadvantages you choose at the start can ‘scale’ well, and not just affect the early or late game only. I think I need to tailor them to play-styles rather than things that help you directly in combat (more early game use) or in managing an army (more late game use). It’s a tricky one!